Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation

N
EVER
B
URN
A W
ITCH

A ROWAN GANT INVESTIGATION

A Novel of Suspense and Magick

By

E. M. A. Mysteries

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual events or locales
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

NEVER BURN A WITCH: A Rowan Gant
Investigation

A WillowTree Press / E.M.A. Mysteries
Book

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2000, 2001 by M. R. Sellars

Cover design by Johnathan Minton, Copyright ©
2001

This e-book edition is licensed for your
personal enjoyment only. This e-book edition may not be re-sold or
given away to other people.

If you would like to share this book with
another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
person

This book may not be reproduced in whole or
in part, by any means, electronic or mechanical, without
permission.

For information contact: WillowTree Press on
the World Wide Web http://www.willowtreepress.com

Smashwords Edition – 2010

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As always there are a number of individuals
to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, for without them and their
staunch moral support, Rowan Gant would not exist—

Sergeant Scott Ruddle, SLPD for helping me
keep it real; my incredible (and sadistically evil) team of
editors—Celeste, Kathy, Margo, Roxanne, Scott, and Sharon;
Johnathan Minton for cover art that goes beyond my wildest
imagination; the entire staff of WillowTree Press; Peter Franciscus
for the swimming pool technicalities; Doctor Ed Uthman for the
information on postmortems; my wife; and finally, my daughter for
making me understand just how much I would have missed being a
father.

PS. Roxanne, I’m glad you liked Chapter 18 so
much…

In remembrance of

Vito John Ponticello

January 5, 1949 – September 29, 2000

Mystic Valley goes on but you will be sorely
missed…

For Kat…

My wife…

My Best Friend…

My Confidant…

And most of all,

My Soul Mate.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

While the city of St. Louis and its various
notable landmarks are certainly real, many names have been changed
and liberties taken with some of the details in this book. They are
fabrications. They are pieces of fiction within fiction to create
an illusion of reality to be experienced and enjoyed.

In short, I made them up because it helped me
make the story more entertaining, or in some cases, just because I
wanted to.

Note also that this book is a first-person
narrative. You are seeing this story through the eyes of Rowan
Gant. The words you are reading are his thoughts. In first person
writing, the narrative should match the dialogue of the character
telling the story. Since Rowan, (and anyone else that I know of for
that matter,) does not speak in perfect, unblemished English
throughout his dialogue, he will not do so throughout his
narrative. Therefore, you will notice that some grammatical
anomalies have been retained (under protest from editors) in order
to support this illusion of reality.

Let me repeat something—I DID IT ON PURPOSE.
Do NOT send me an email complaining about my grammar. It is a rude
thing to do, and it does nothing more than waste your valuable
time. If you find a typo, that is a different story. Even editors
miss a few now and then.

Finally, this book is not intended as a
primer for WitchCraft, Wicca, or any Pagan path. However, please
note that the rituals, spells, and explanations of these
religious/magickal practices are accurate. Some of my explanations
may not fit your particular tradition, but you should remember that
your explanations might not fit mine either.

And, yes, some of the magick is “over the
top.” But, like I said in the first paragraph, this is fiction…

Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion,

or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof
;

or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press;

or the right of the people to peaceably
assemble,

and to petition the government for a redress
of grievances.

Amendment I

Constitution of the United States of
America

Ratified December 15, 1791

Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live.

Holy Bible – KJV

Book of Exodus

Chapter 22, Verse 18

W
et clumps of snowflakes
streamed heavily downward from the low blanket of clouds that
covered the city. Along Wellington Parkway, a large clock on a bank
marquee winked languidly in the frosty night. With several of its
bulbs having long since expired from usefulness, dark holes were
left gaping in the teeter-tottering display of time and
temperature. Four-Oh-something A.M. Twenty-something degrees F.
Minus-something degrees C. The sign continued silently dispensing
the information even as yet another of its incandescent elements
flared and sputtered into nonexistence. Now, only an empty black
rectangle stared back from where the “something” used to
be.

The old man cinched his threadbare
overcoat tighter against the chill winter wind and took another
pull on the pint of off-brand whiskey before burying his
half-frozen hands in his pockets. Watching the clock with bleary,
watered eyes, he muttered nonsensically to himself. His slurred
voice recited a local adage that said,
“If
you don’t like the weather in Saint Louis, just wait a minute.
It’ll change.”
Thus far, the only change he had
witnessed had been for the worse.

This winter felt just as fickle to him as the
recent summer. Brief reprieves followed by endless torture. It made
no difference that the experts were proclaiming this an unusually
harsh winter for Saint Louis. The harshest in more than twenty
years, they said. If you lived on the streets, isobaric graphs were
mere scribbles on a map, and “El Ninõ” was just a foreign phrase.
Reality was that you either froze or you broiled. The pleasant
weather in between the two extremes never seemed to last for
long.

The whiskey finished burning its way down the
old man’s raw throat and splashed hard in the pit of his empty
stomach. The merest tingling sensation spread outward, lending him
only the faintest illusion of warmth. In his clouded brain, he
feared it wasn’t real. In his apathetic heart, he knew it wouldn’t
last.

Recent events bleached lackluster by the
alcohol flickered unevenly through his brain, bringing a brief
smile to his blistered lips. The warmth and comfort of the mall
before the rent-a-cops had chased him from its sanctuary. A fresh
pint of whiskey. A half pack of cigarettes carelessly lost by
someone who could afford more and serendipitously found by him. But
most especially, he recalled watching the televisions through the
window of the video store just like he did every night. Yes, most
especially that.

He never missed the evening news, and he
always made sure to watch Channel Four. The others were okay, but
Channel Four was his favorite, all because of Tracy. Tracy Watson,
the cute, brunette weather girl with the red, pouting lips and
bright blue eyes. Now, even in the frigid night, he felt a rush of
warmth as he fantasized about the way she enhanced the burgundy
sweater she had been wearing when she gave her forecast. The pearl
necklace around her delicate neck. The way she brushed the hair
from her face with manicured fingernails just before smiling at him
and motioning to the chroma-keyed radar map.

He knew she was smiling at
him
. He knew she was talking
directly
to
him
. He knew because she always talked
specifically to
him
, warning
of heat waves and cold snaps. Tracy cared about the old man, of
this he was sure—and last night was no exception. With loving
concern, she had instructed him to find someplace indoors to sleep
because it was going to get colder, and it was going to snow very
soon. She was worried about
him,
and it made the old man feel wanted.

He took heed of her caution, for Tracy was
always right about the weather. But, he mumbled aloud as his libido
assumed control, even if she wasn’t right this time, “Tracy’s got
great tits.”

Bitter wind hacked away at the old man in
small choppy gusts, snapping him out of his lurid fantasy and
testifying that the pretty meteorologist had truly been correct
this time. Icy gobbets of snowflakes spattered against his
wind-chapped face and clung momentarily to his scraggly beard
before morphing into their liquid state. He took another quick pull
on the whiskey bottle then gathered the buttonless front of his
overcoat in frostbitten hands before hurrying across the dimly lit
street. The sign on the bank winked and visually announced it to be
four-thirty-something A.M.

Meadowbrook Park. The old man trudged
across the hard ground, his numb feet making crunching noises on
the frozen grass as he took staggering aim at a not too distant
building. The public restrooms were always unlocked and open, and
it was here he would seek refuge whenever Tracy warned him to do
so. When it was hot, running water and a cool concrete floor would
chase away the sweltering heat of a typical Saint Louis summer.
When it was cold, cinder block walls and a roof offered shelter
from the bitter wind. To a homeless individual like himself, the
Meadowbrook Park public restrooms were like a suite at the
Adam’s Mark
downtown.

Just a few more steps and he would be inside
where he could escape the winter tempest and its dangerous chill,
and then he would be okay. Tracy had told him so just before she
blew him a kiss.

Sickly yellow light emanating from a
low-wattage, incandescent bulb flowed down the side of the small
building, struggling to chase away the cold darkness, only to be
swallowed by it. He pressed forward, only to be halted by a recent
attack of bureaucratic efficiency. Elongated shadows spread
diagonally across the brown painted door, cast prominently by a
freshly installed, heavy-duty hasp and padlock. The reflections
from the shiny hardware taunted the old man as he reached out to
touch the ice-cold metal barrier. Yes. Yes, it was really there—not
a sour mash-induced hallucination as he had hoped. Of all the times
for the county maintenance crews to suddenly do their jobs, why
now?

Dammit! What was he going to do? He’d
been wandering all night, and if he didn’t find shelter soon he
would surely freeze to death. He knew that such a thing would make
Tracy sad, and he couldn’t bear such a thought. Even worse, he’d
never again get to see her wear that pink blouse he liked so much.
The one he was sure he could see right through. The one he was
certain she wore just for
him
.

The old man continued murmuring his random
musings about the lovely, young television personality, stopping
only for a moment to suck eagerly on the rapidly depleting pint of
cheap whiskey. With frost-deadened fingers, he fumbled the cap back
onto the bottle and thrust it into his thin coat. Burying his hands
in his pockets, he hunched his shoulders forward to ward off the
wind and turned in place as he stamped his feet. The warmth of the
alcohol was fading as rapidly as it came, and the bottle would soon
be empty. The old man needed to find a place to sleep.

Fire.

At first, he thought it might be just another
of those bourbon-induced mirages, but the padlock on the door had
definitely been for real, so maybe this was too. Squinting through
bleary eyes, the old man struggled to focus on the bright,
yellow-orange glow in the near distance. The flickering light was
growing brighter by the second and now illuminated the interior of
the nearby picnic pavilion from which it came.